Chapter 4: The Morning After
The first sensation was weight. A deep, anchored softness on my chest. Then came the smell—my own shampoo, but filtered through unfamiliar hair that spilled across my face in a honey-blonde curtain. I opened my eyes. The ceiling of my bedroom, the slow spin of the fan. But the body beneath the sheets was all wrong.
Memory returned in a sickening plunge. The swap. The bed. Her hands. Her touch in the dark.
I was still curled on my side. Jen—in my body—was pressed against my back, one of my heavy arms draped over her own slender waist. Her breathing was slow, even. She was still asleep.
I lay perfectly still, cataloging the prison. The ache in my lower back was different, a taut string connecting to the broad new swing of my hips. My breasts, those impossible, heavy things, pressed together, a warm, malleable weight that shifted with every cautious breath I took. The nipples were tight, hypersensitive against the linen. I could feel the sheet touching every inch of me, a map of nerve-endings I’d never had. Between my legs was a quiet, empty ache, a ghost of last night’s violation that wasn’t a violation because I hadn’t stopped it.
Shame, hot and sour, coated my throat.
I had to get out of this bed.
Moving with glacial care, I lifted the heavy arm from my waist. It fell back against the mattress with a soft thud. Jen didn’t stir. I started to turn, to slide away, but the mechanics were alien. My center of gravity was lower, in my hips and belly. I had to consciously roll, a slow heave of soft flesh, feeling the jiggle in my chest and the pull in my thighs. I finally made it onto my back, staring up.
My own face, slack in sleep, was inches away. It was surreal, a out-of-body experience turned inside out. My mouth was slightly open. My cheek was pressed into the pillow. I looked peaceful. I looked like a stranger.
And then I saw the tent in the sheets.
A distinct ridge of fabric, just below the waistband of my—his—boxer-briefs. An erection. My body, reacting on its own autonomic rhythm to the proximity, to the scent, to the memory of what she had done with it.
A cold, sharp curiosity cut through the shame. It was a clinical impulse, the same one that made me take apart old radios to see the circuits. This was just a machine, too. A biological machine. One I no longer controlled.
Before I could stop myself, I was moving.
I pushed the sheets down. The morning air was cool on my skin, raising more goosebumps. I sat up, a process that made my head swim and my chest sway. I looked down at Jen’s body, my body now. The gentle slope of the stomach, the dramatic flare of the hips, the long lines of her legs. The lace panties, black against pale skin, were damp in the center. I felt that, too—a warm, slick vulnerability.
My gaze snapped back to the erection.
Hesitating, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs, I reached out. Not with my mind, but with her small, delicate hand. I hooked my fingers into the waistband of the boxers. I tugged down.
It sprang free, familiar and utterly foreign. It was mine. The same slight curve, the same veins, the same. It was fully hard, the tip flushed and sensitive-looking. A drop of moisture gleamed at the slit.
A wave of dizziness hit me. This was madness.
But I was already shifting, swinging her legs—my legs—over, straddling his hips. My thighs, so much thicker and softer than I was used to, framed his lean torso. The lace of the panties was a scant barrier, already damp. I could feel the heat of him against me through it.
My breath came in short, shallow gasps. This wasn’t me. This was some desperate, unraveling version of me, driven by a need to understand, to grasp some thread of control in this freefall.
I reached down, my fingers trembling, and moved the damp fabric aside. The feeling of the air on exposed, wet skin was shocking. I positioned him, the blunt head pressing against a place that was a mystery. My other hand braced on his chest—my chest. I felt the steady, sleeping heartbeat under my palm.
I lowered myself.
The pressure was immense, a stretching, burning fullness that was neither pain nor pleasure but a shocking, all-consuming invasion. I gasped, a high, feminine sound that echoed in the quiet room. I stopped, my whole body trembling, suspended. I was panting. The feeling was overwhelming, a total re-wiring of my sense of self. I was being filled by myself.
Beneath me, my own face twitched. My eyelids fluttered.
I was seated fully now, a deep, impossible ache. I couldn’t move. I just stared down at my own waking face.
My eyes—his eyes—opened. There was a moment of blank, morning confusion. Then they focused. On the ceiling, on the hair framing his vision, on the sensation, and finally, on me.
On Jen’s face, staring back from above him.
His brain—her brain—caught up. I saw the shock, the dawning, horrifying comprehension in my own brown eyes. They widened. The mouth dropped open.
“What…” my voice, rough with sleep, croaked. “Justin…?”
I couldn’t speak. I just stared, paralyzed, impaled.
Her hands—my strong, familiar hands—flew to my hips. She didn’t push me away. Her fingers dug into the soft flesh, feeling it, confirming it. A shudder ran through the body beneath me. Her expression cycled through terror, disbelief, and then, a slow, dark wonder.
“Oh, god,” she breathed, my voice a hoarse whisper. “You’re inside… me.”
Her grip tightened. She didn’t throw me off. She held me there. Her eyes locked on mine. The confusion in them was hardening into something else, something intense and frightening.
“Why?” she asked, but it wasn’t an accusation. It was a demand for data.
“I… I had to know,” I choked out, Jen’s voice trembling. “It’s my…”
“It’s mine,” she corrected softly, her hands moving on my hips, a possessive exploration. A thumb brushed the sharp bone there. She shifted underneath me, the smallest adjustment.
A bolt of sensation, raw and electric, ripped through my core. I cried out, my head falling back.
A slow, unfamiliar smile spread across my own face. “You feel that?” she murmured. “That’s me. You’re feeling me.”
Before I could answer, she moved her hips. A sharp, upward thrust.
The world dissolved into pure, shocking sensation. A choked scream died in my throat. My hands flew to her shoulders, nails digging into my own skin. She did it again, setting a slow, deliberate rhythm. Each movement dragged a gasp from my lungs. The weight on my chest bounced with the motion, a secondary, embarrassing rhythm. The fullness was transforming, becoming a coiled spring of terrifying pleasure, building from that deep, central point she was hammering.
“Look at you,” she said, my own voice filled with awe and a terrifying hunger. “Look at us.”
My eyes, tear-blurred, looked down. The sight was devastating. My body—his body—underneath, muscular and tense. And on top, Jen’s body, her back arched, her stomach taut, her blonde hair falling like a curtain. A body I was piloting into oblivion.
I was losing myself in the feedback loop, in the sensations she was orchestrating from below. The control was slipping, the clinical curiosity drowned in a flood of chemical response. My own hips began to move, meeting her thrusts, a betraying, instinctive rhythm. A keening sound escaped my lips.
“That’s it,” she coaxed, her breath coming faster. “You see? This is what I wanted. To be this close. To be you.”
Her words were a splash of cold water that only made the fire burn hotter. This was her fantasy. I was a passenger in my own violation, and I was accelerating.
The coil snapped.
Pleasure, white-hot and catastrophic, exploded through every nerve ending. It wasn't like anything I’d ever known. It was a deep, internal detonation that radiated out, clenching muscles I didn't know I had, seizing my lungs, blinding me. I heard a raw, ragged scream—it was my voice, her voice, ours.
As the waves subsided, leaving me shaking and hollow, I felt him—her—stiffen beneath me. A guttural groan, my own groan, filled the room. A final, powerful thrust, and then a pulsing heat, deep inside, a claiming intimacy that left me feeling utterly, definitively conquered.
Silence descended, broken only by our ragged breathing.
Slowly, my vision cleared. I was slumped forward, my forehead resting on my own sweaty collarbone. Her hands were still on my hips, slack now.
I couldn’t move. I was crying, soundless tears soaking into the chest hair of my own body.
After a long minute, her hands came up. They framed my face—her face—and gently lifted it. She looked into my wet, hazel eyes with my own cool, brown ones.
“Now you know,” she said quietly, wiping a tear with my thumb. There was no triumph in her voice. Just a profound, unsettling certainty.
She shifted, easing out of me. The emptiness was a new kind of shock, a loss. I rolled off, collapsing onto my back beside her, staring at the spinning fan again. The wetness between my legs was a cold, undeniable fact.
We lay there, two people in the wrong skins, connected by a shared, devastating knowledge. The device on the nightstand hummed, its green light a steady, judgmental eye.
The question hung in the air, thicker than the smell of sex and sweat.
What do we do now?